FORMAS ONÍRICAS

Johansson Projects presents FORMAS ONÍRICAS by Alexis Mata, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Mata challenges our notions of wealth, beauty, and success through dichotomies of ideas and mediums. Blending his personal experiences with cosmological themes, his work highlights the battle of good and evil, and the duality of material and spiritual. Born in Mexico City, his work bridges the social and political, by questioning the violence and inequalities of his native home.

Mata’s approach combines the classical and contemporary by using the latest technology along with traditional art making. His latest body of work, FORMAS ONÍRICAS, is based on poetic texts which were transformed into imagery with the help of the AI program, Midjourney. The artist then further transmutes these digital renditions through an analog process of oil painting – thus blurring the lines between the virtual and the real. The result is a pixelated and glitched representation of the familiar.

Prompted by internal contemplations and dream analysis, Mata explores how thoughts and feelings are generated – and whether they can be shaped by artificial intelligence. FORMAS ONÍRICAS is his most personal work to date, with each form and color expressing the artist’s internal narrative.

Each painting tells a story – a poem, a riddle, a haiku – through abstract forms and colors. What we perceive is not an objective reality, but rather an oneiric view of our world.

The exhibit can be experienced online June 15 – August 30, 2023